From what we’re told about multisites and online churches…

1. We get just as much out of watching a video screen as being there in person
2. Participating in person wouldn’t really change the experience anyway
3. The leader is just as happy seeing me as an off-site statistic than seeing my face and hearing my voice
4. The leader doesn’t need to really know me, nor I him

If that logic is good enough for worship, shouldn’t it be good enough for football, which we’re told isn’t nearly as important?

1. Watching on TV is just as exciting as being there
2. Cheering from my couch affects the team just as positively as the folks who are cheering at the stadium
3. The coach and quarterback know that I’m with them when they review the Nielsen ratings the next day
4. The coach and QB would prefer that I never interact with them in real life

Besides #4, no-one believes that this is the case. Going to a game is such a different experience than watching on TV that we’ll pay lots of money for the opportunity to do it. It’s not surprising, therefore, that we so often find Perry Noble on the sidelines at Clemson football games, and his leaders in the stands (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

These guys obviously don’t believe that watching at home is as good as being there.

Except when it comes to church.

The sermon you hear on your iPod is significantly inferior to the preaching you hear at your local church on Sunday morning. Here’s why:

1. The preacher doesn’t know you. Although preaching is not the only aspect of shepherding, ideally preaching and shepherding should go together. A preacher feeds his flock the Word of God, though always presenting it in a way that’s meaningful for that particular congregation. To your pastor, you’re a known family member sitting around the (metaphorical) table; to your podcast preacher, you’re a hit, an anonymous number.
2. You can choose your sermons. Podcasts are perfect for people with itching ears (that’s all of us). Each sermon is labeled and invites us to download or delete it. When I go to my local church on Sunday, I usually don’t know the details of the pastor’s sermon. He commits to preach the Word of God as it’s written, and I commit to listen, test and obey the preached Word as I hear it. Dodging difficult messages is harder when you don’t see them coming.
3. You can listen while distracted. When you listen to a preacher while driving down the interstate eating your lunch, you’re probably not going to be able to concentrate quite as well as if you were sitting in church. The very value of podcasting is that we can take our preachers with us, so the assumption is that we’ll be multitasking when we listen. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with multitasking, but it’s not worship.
4. You can listen without your Bible. Although this is possible to do in church, the on-the-go multitasking quality of podcast audiences makes this much more likely. Having a Bible on hand as we listen lets us see as well as hear the Word; it also lets us quickly check the context of a verse and engage in on-the-fly testing of the preacher’s message.
5. You’re alone. In church I am both encouraged and challenged by the fact that I see my Christian family worshipping with me. Fellowship with God is accompanied by fellowship with his family. Although podcasting and Internet participation carry with them the idea of a virtual community, it’s still only virtual. I know there may be thousands of other believers sharing the podcast with me, but I don’t know who they are. Neither will they know me.
6. He’s always preaching to someone else. When we listen to a podcast preacher, it’s almost always someone else’s preacher. When the preacher challenges his congregation, it’s always someone else who’s being challenged, not me. Not only am I anonymous and unaccountable, the preacher isn’t even expecting me to be accountable.
7. It’s usually out of context. Sermons are an integral part of church worship, which usually includes other elements like singing, prayer, confession, communion and giving. To take the sermon out of that context deprives it of the participation and preparation that is a valuable part of the in-church sermon.

I’m not saying that we need to delete all of our podcast subscriptions. There are obviously exceptions to all the points I’ve just made.

Clearly, there is value in hearing the Word of God preached well by anyone, but our primary source of spiritual sustenance, beyond our own Bible study and prayer, should come through membership in a local church with a preacher that faithfully preaches God’s Word.

Everything else is gravy. Tasty, but not filling.

(Full disclosure. My own podcast list, in order of most listened to, is Sinclair Furguson, Alistair Begg, and RC Sproul.)

It is time that the Christian community got beyond themselves…it is time that we begin looking for what IS working in other churches and ministries rather than sit around and criticize what is going on. Be secure enough to get outside of the circle of people who think, talk and act just like you!!!

Here’s what he tells pastors about what he really thinks about other churches.

We are part of the Southern Baptist Convention. We are part but not married to them. However they are kind of like the Titanic, they are sinking but instead of sinking they are just rearranging the chairs.

With talk like that, it’s probably just as well they’re not married.

Ed Stetzer says:

If you aren’t questioning multi-site, you aren’t thinking.

Hmmm. I guess we know who played on a basketball team that didn’t keep score.

credit for video to Out of Ur.

Stanley the Younger is a lead-by-example advocate of CEO pastoring and wants to run through the Bible with a large bottle of whiteout to get rid of the tricky bits that describe Christ-modeled pastoral ministry. Since Downing linked to this article last week, I haven’t been able to get this section out of my head:

Should we stop talking about pastors as “shepherds”?
Absolutely. That word needs to go away. Jesus talked about shepherds because there was one over there in a pasture he could point to. But to bring in that imagery today and say, “Pastor, you’re the shepherd of the flock,” no. I’ve never seen a flock. I’ve never spent five minutes with a shepherd. It was culturally relevant in the time of Jesus, but it’s not culturally relevant any more.

Absolutely. That word needs to go away. Think about that and how confidently it appears to have been uttered. This site has chronicled recent appalling disrespect shown to God’s Word by Furtick and his staff, and this Stanley quote shook me with the realization of just how riddled the Turnstile Church is with a low opinion of God’s written revelation.

Some related thoughts on Stanley and the horde of leaders who imbibe his wisdom:

• They worship culture more than the creator of culture. Who created the sheep? Who taught man to care for those sheep? Perhaps there was a shepherd standing nearby when Jesus spoke, but that’s only because before the foundation of the world God had ordained his profession and his activities that day. The illustration was the product of a Creator, not of a culture.
• They consider themselves equal to Christ. When Jesus said “Follow me,” Stanley apparently thought he was talking about Stanley, as in, “Follow Stanley.”
  

  “Follow me.” Follow we never works. Ever. It’s “follow me.”

  Stanley refuses to follow Jesus’ on shepherding, yet appropriates Jesus’ words to clear the deck for himself and bludgeon his followers into submission.

• They blaspheme the Word. Jesus is the Word, yet Stanley thinks the best he could do was search for an about-to-expire metaphor because it happened to be close at hand. Jesus was so inept with his references to shepherding that Stanley claims they were irrelevant as soon as Acts. “By the time of the Book of Acts, the shepherd model is gone,” he said. In other words, Jesus’ own words were stale by the time the New Testament was written. If we can dismiss Jesus so easily, why pay any attention to anything the other old, dead guys wrote?
• They strip the Word of inconvenient truths. The obligations of a shepherd don’t feel like they fit our more advanced times, so we shouldn’t even try to deal with them. Stanley cites Bill Hybels as inspiration for dismissing the Bible as too anachronistic.
  

  It’s going to be the best corporate institution it can possibly be, and we’re not going to try to merge first century –

  The church wasn’t an organization in the first century.

  Not an organization? Don’t tell Paul or any of the supervising apostles in Jerusalem. How shortsighted was Jesus not to anticipate that the church would grow so much it would one day turn into an organization? You can’t expect too much business foresight from a young rural carpenter, though, so we’ll give him a break. He founded a pretty useful brand name, so we’ll keep him around.

• They misunderstand the role of the pastor. Stanley allows that we can still see glimpses of shepherding.
  

  Nothing works in our culture with that model except this sense of the gentle, pastoral care.

  Yes, the shepherd could be gentle, but he was responsible for the life of his sheep. He fed the sheep, disciplined the sheep, and even sacrificed his life for them. Does David strike you as a gentle-all-the-time kind of character? Me neither.

• They abandon the saints to the wolves. This was yet another important function of the shepherd, and how our aforementioned hero developed the skills that let him fell a giant. If the shepherd was a disposable metaphor, how do the references to heretics as wolves make sense? Note Jesus’ warning in Matthew 7:15:
  

  Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.

  Note Paul’s last words to the church leaders on Ephesus in Acts 20:28-30:

  Take heed unto yourselves, and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit hath made you bishops, to feed the church of the Lord which he purchased with his own blood.

  I know that after my departing grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.

  So much for being irrelevant by Acts. Most on point is Jesus’ reference in John 10 to leaders who abandoned their roles as shepherds.

  I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

  He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them.

  He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

  Yet according to Stanley and his brethren, shepherd is out, and hired hand CEO is in.

  Good to know.

• They add their own wisdom to their religion. Although Stanley is all for doing away with shepherding, he insists on adding the CEO as an essential part of church leadership.
  

  I think a big problem in the church has been the dichotomy between spirituality and leadership. One of the criticisms I get is “Your church is so corporate.” I read blogs all the time. Bloggers complain, “The pastor’s like a CEO.” And I say, “OK, you’re right. Now, why is that a bad model?”

  It’s a bad model for the church because it’s not shepherding and it’s not Biblical. It’s an excellent model for Starbucks, though.

• They are building a mass of mindless followers. The followers must be kept quiet and uninformed.
  

  As you increase the number of people, you have to decrease the complexity of the information. Congregational rule, when you’re trying to make a complicated decision, works against the principle. So consequently, the guy with the microphone and the clearest message always wins. The most persuasive person in the room is going to win. Whether right or wrong.

  We don’t want good arguments to persuade people, then they might start doubting the leader. Think of all the time Paul wasted arguing his case to the council in Jerusalem (Acts 15) when he could have been about his business of being a model CEO.

• They are building a guild of authoritarian leaders. Has it ever struck you how much time these head pastors (?) spend talking to us and each other about leadership? When was the last time they held a conference to talk about God in the fashion of a Piper? Steven Furtick noted the abundance of leadership talk and resources last week:
  

  This generation has the most access to leadership development in the history of the world. We had better MAXIMIZE it.

  For what? Historically, the combination of a little bit of religion, compliant followers and authoritarian leaders has usually led to bad outcomes.

• They are building a nursery for heretics. At times, we at PP are pressed to declare that folk like Noble and Furtick are burn-them-at-the-stake heretics. When we refuse to do so, we’re usually told to go away because we’re hyperventilating about stuff that doesn’t matter.

  For the last decade or so, astute observers of American evangelicalism have been complaining and warning about the church’s creeping anti-intellectualism. The Turnstile Church is what you get when you mix that anti-intellectualism with cultural flexibility–a church that looks like the culture it’s a product of, but that can’t see what might be problematic with that. Note how criticism is dismissed without ever–ever–engaging ideas or Scripture. If you can’t defend your ideas, if you refuse all challenges, how would you ever know whether the wolves have entered the fold?

We live at a time where massive churches are led by pastors who quote Scripture like it was Shakespeare (a few well-known quotes repeated over and over), distort it, ignore it or reject it. We are not yet at the stage where we have much blatant heresy, but we’re getting there.

What happens to the generation that comes after Stanley and Warren and Noble and Furtick? The generation that has been encouraged to ignore the study of Scripture. The generation that thinks authoritarian leaders are more important than pastors. That knows there’s no value in Leviticus. That thinks Acts talks about pastors on video screens. The generation that thinks most other local churches are either corrupt or inept. That thinks you can talk about God however you want to.

I shudder.

The problem is that by the time we get there, it’s too late. How do you bring CEOs back to the Bible when they don’t know what’s in it and don’t think it should govern them? By then, the game is lost.

So when do you raise the alarm? When do you scream bloody murder?

Now. You do it now.

Skye summarizes his speach with three main points:

1. Your legitimacy does not come from the impact of your ministry.
2. If outcomes are in God’s hands, and not yours, you must stop judging the legitimacy of your ministry by the tangible outcomes of the ministry. You must also stop judging other ministries by the tangible outcomes as well.
3. If our identity is truly rooted in Christ, we will defy the expectations of our culture.

Listen to this eight minute clip. Jethani really makes some great points.

Recent Tweet from Furtick:

Great night w a great man of God. Thx Pastor Joel 4 your humility & msg of hope. Love & honor!

Now it seems Pastor Furtick has added Joel Osteen to his growing list of spiritual mentors. Maybe, you say, this was just a nice photo op, and Steven doesn’t really know much about Osteen. Nope. Here’s a post defending Osteen from Furtick’s blog. A few selected quotes:

But to all of you mean spirited name callers who have made a career of condemning celebrity preachers:
Who the heck do you think you are to criticize a man who is impacting a city like Pastor Joel is impacting Houston?

Since when is “impacting a city” the final litmus test of God’s approval? One could easily argue Truman had a large impact on Nagasaki.

…Osteen preaches to 40,000 people weekly…
You couldn’t get 40,000 people to come hear you preach if you gave away free Escalades at the door.

Once again, we get the SCOREBOARD argument, and a slam at smaller congregations. And regardless of what Osteen may be preaching, it’s all fine because he draws a large crowd.

…If you’re concerned about a lack of cross centered preaching, then preach the cross yourself instead of wasting valuable time opining about how someone else should do it better.

Which goes completely against Jesus and Paul’s many admonishments to be on the lookout for false teachers.

…Don’t hurl insults at someone with a big church simply because you can’t make your church grow, and although you’d never admit it, you’re jealous.
That’s right… most of the time the motive isn’t defense of the Gospel… it’s jealousy and presumption.

And of course, the strawman argument that the only people who may have a problem with Osteen are jealous pastors. We couldn’t possibly be concerned Christians following the biblical call to “test all things”.

…You know, I think it’s absolutely essential that Christians think critically about what is being taught in Christian pulpits. We must preserve sound doctrine. We must guard against erroneous theologies.

This is a hilarious way to end a post that is scolding us for doing just what he says we must do. But, to follow Steven’s advice here and think critically about what’s being taught, here’s a clip of Osteen you should watch. Is this what Steven calls sound doctrine?

Now, I’d like to open a discussion about mega-churches. Let me make it clear that I have never heard James Duncan speak against mega-churches. These views are mine and mine alone.  He is certainly capable of agreeing or disagreeing with any of these thoughts, as are each of you.  I will attempt to put forward a scriptural view of what Church is, and how it should look. However, admitting that some of this is grey area, I am open to correction.

Two straw-men that must be burnt before we can engage in any authentic discussion on this matter:

1. There is no concrete cut-off number where a church has become too large.  It would be impossible to pinpoint such a number. Thus, forcing me to do so would effectively change the point of this discussion and kill any other argument that I may be able to make.
2. To insinuate that large attendance of a particular church is necessary for the sake of thousands of salvations, is to completely misunderstand the nature of salvation, the purpose of church, and the power of the Almighty God. If God can save souls at a certain mega-church, he can also do so at a small rural congregation, or even in some open field in China where there is no established church of any size in sight.

For the sake of this discussion, we’ll use Hartford Institute’s definition for a mega-church, which it gives in it’s simplest terms as a Protestant congregation of two thousand or more regular attenders. Again, don’t get caught up in a specific number, but it will help if we all work from the same definition.

With all this in mind, I will now try to answer:

What is Wrong With a Mega-Church?

• It usurps the shepherd/sheep relationship that a pastor is to have with his congregation. We’ve seen here where some pastors have been down-right scornful with members of their flock who would hope for their pastor to care about them specifically. True, one man cannot faithfully minister to 10,000 people, but a pastor’s heart should be to care for his sheep. Here’s what Andy Stanley said in a 2006 interview with Leadership Journal: “Should we stop talking about pastors as “shepherds”?
  

  Absolutely. That word needs to go away. Jesus talked about shepherds because there was one over there in a pasture he could point to. But to bring in that imagery today and say, “Pastor, you’re the shepherd of the flock,” no. I’ve never seen a flock. I’ve never spent five minutes with a shepherd. It was culturally relevant in the time of Jesus, but it’s not culturally relevant any more.

  Nothing works in our culture with that model except this sense of the gentle, pastoral care. Obviously that is a face of church ministry, but that’s not leadership.

  I think most of us understand that you can’t just throw out biblical terms because they are problematic to our methodology, but that’s exactly what Stanley has done, as have hundreds of other “pastors” who see him as a mentor. We must change our methodology to fit scripture, even if that means not packing thousands of seats with people you have no intention of ministering to. It only makes sense that a pastor should not be over a congregation that is too large for him to meet their needs. Of course, some of this physical work is delegated to deacons, but if a pastor is to be held accountable for all the sheep entrusted to him, he needs to have a relationship with them. Some pastors may be able to faithfully attend to 1000 or more members. Some may only be able to care for 20 or 30, but if a person is going to church and not being ministered to, they are actually just attending a performance.

• It fuels the cult-of-personality, celebrity pastor driven congregation. The majority of these mega-churches are headed by charismatic, purpose-driven leaders. These guys are very driven towards their goals. I would assume that most of these guys could be just as successful running any business as they have been in running a church. That leads me to ask, is this why thousands of people are showing up on Sunday morning? I don’t recall Paul, when giving instructions to the churches he planted, asking, “Who among you has the most charismatic personalty? Who is the most fashionably dressed? Who has the most clever wit?”. No, the things he looked for in church leaders (listed in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 ) all dealt with character and righteousness.
• It raises questions about the motivation for a pastor to have such a church. As in, why do you need 12,000 people in your church, 11, 500 of whom you will never have any contact whatsoever? Are you the only minister in your town capable of delivering the Gospel? Isn’t it possible that a large majority of these peoples could be more effective elsewhere, where there attendance will be much more noticeable? Is it a pride issue? Does it make you feel powerful to know their are thousands of souls hanging on your every word? One could assume that a congregation of 12,000 probably pays better than a congregation of 500. Is that an issue?
• It makes it impossible for all attendees to be involved in worship in any meaningful way. The real worship will have to be performed by those on stage, while thousands of others watch from the seats. 1 Corinthians 14:26 paints a picture of all members being vitally involved in a worship service. This is completely impossible at a mega-church. The ministry is then left to the professionals, while the normal people sit and watch.  This is also in contrast with Ephesians 5:19. I could also argue that this is against the Priesthood of Believers described in 1 Peter 2:9.

I’m going to stop here for now. If there is sufficient discussion, I may do a series on this, but this should be plenty to get us started.

Too many pastors … let the expectations and demands of needy, clingy church people (notice I didn’t say Christians) DRIVE them to a place of insanity.

A few questions:

1. Isn’t everyone needy?
2. Shouldn’t Christians be clingy?
3. Does being needy mean you’ve lost your salvation?
4. Does going to church (thus becoming a church person) make you lose your salvation?
5. Wasn’t the one sheep of the 99 that the shepherd went after somewhat needy?
6. Isn’t it a pastor’s job to care for the needy?
7. What does Noble have against Christians who go to churches other than his own?

1. Level 1 – Essentials of the Faith.  This level includes things like the virgin birth, the Trinity, the Resurrection, and the deity of Christ. If we don’t get these right, we can’t really consider ourselves Christians.
2. Level 2 – There is room within level two for disagreement, but these are serious enough that we couldn’t really worship together on a regular basis if we did not agree. Things included in this group may be infant baptism, charismatic gifts, and position on predestination.
3. Level 3 – These are non-essential to the Faith. It doesn’t mean they aren’t important or shouldn’t be discussed. It simply means we won’t have to break fellowship over a disagreement. One thing that pops in to my mind on this level would be eschatology.

The reason I bring this up is because it seems like some here only recognize Level 1 and Level 3. You either push to call someone a heretic, or you don’t think it’s worth making a fuss about.  That makes discussion particularly tough for me, because I would say most of the disagreements that I share on this site fall into Level 2. I’m not saying the person in error can’t be a Christian. I’m not calling them a heretic or a false prophet. However, for the most part, I’m not nit-picking either. I’m pointing out (sometimes in a light-hearted manner) things that I consider to be very serious issues. I point them out because I think these issues need to be addressed by each individual believer, and sadly, some modern leaders seem to want them swept under a rug.

I want to hear from you. Which issues fall into each level for you? Is this completely subjective, or is there a biblical standard to follow? Does it matter at all, or is it enough for one to confess belief in Jesus?